Teatime talk

"Lunch" isn't a period-correct meal, but 'supper'  'dinner' and 'picnic' don't have the same ring.

Tea as a meal did not exist in 1761. One might drink tea, but not "take tea". It was an expensive beverage. The leaves were locked up and used twice, then given to servants for their own use. Often these used leaves were sold, adulterants added, and resold as fresh tea.

The only sweetening was honey or sugar cane, grown by slave labor in the tropics and imported. Sugar beets were developed later, during the Napoleonic Wars. Sugar cubes, "one lump or two?" were not invented and patented until 1843. (writers of Regency romance take note!) Before that sugar was molded into tall conical loaves weighing several pounds each, and had to be cut with special sugar nips.

Tea was a lifesaver for the English for an unexpected reason- the act of boiling water for tea killed bacteria. People held to the medieval theory that illness was brought on by "miasma" or bad air, and so paid no attention to the cleanliness of their food, water, or persons. The link between water and illness was not dreamed of until the 1854 cholera epidemic, and even then, many were skeptical.